How To Add Custom Modules In Ansible

Okay, we all know Ansible installation is coming with default modules and you don’t need to download or configure any additional modules for normal cases, Yes batteries already included.

But, what if you need to achieve something with Ansible but a suitable module is not available ? No worries, you can write your own modules for local use; that’s the beauty of Ansible.

Also See all Community Supported Ansible Modules.

Before you start, just make sure you have searched the module library and confirmed nothing suitable for your special use.

So, how to add custom modules ?

You can write your own modules or copy modules from other people (if they have shared publicly). Here I am using the diff module by cytopia for demo purpose.

Learn more about developing a new Ansible Module.

You can add a local module in any of below locations as Ansible automatically loads all executable files found in those directories as modules.

• ~/.ansible/plugins/modules/
• /usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules/
• any directory in ANSIBLE_LIBRARY environment variable

You can search and confirm the same by checking Ansible version, you can see the paths in ansible python module location line.

$ ansible --version
ansible 2.5.1
  config file = /home/devops/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = [u'/home/devops/.ansible/plugins/modules', u'/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ansible
  executable location = /usr/bin/ansible
  python version = 2.7.17 (default, Nov  7 2019, 10:07:09) [GCC 7.4.0]

Aaah, I cannot find any modules there !

No need to worry, if you cannot see modules or no such path (/home/devops/.ansible/plugins/modules or /usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules) , as we told earlier those are default directories configured to search for modules.

You can find the path of existing modules using ansible-doc command as below.

$ ansible-doc -t module yum
> YUM    (/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ansible/modules/packaging/os/yum.py)

        Installs, upgrade, downgrades, removes, and lists packages and groups with the
        `yum' package manager. This module only works on Python 2. If you require
        Python 3 support see the [dnf] module.
.
.
<output removed>

Okay, let us add our module

Now, I am downloading diff module from github (just clone the repo or download only diff.py from repo) and move diff.py to my own module path – /home/devops/.ansible/plugins/modules

$ git clone https://github.com/cytopia/ansible-module-diff

$ ls -l ansible-module-diff/
total 52
-rwxrwxr-x 1 devops devops 11128 Feb  3 10:58 diff.py
-rw-rw-r-- 1 devops devops 35059 Feb  3 10:58 LICENSE
-rw-rw-r-- 1 devops devops  2391 Feb  3 10:58 README.md

$ mkdir -p /home/devops/.ansible/plugins/modules

$ cp ansible-module-diff/diff.py /home/devops/.ansible/plugins/modules/

Verify my module if its fetched by Ansible or not.

$ ansible-doc -t module diff
> DIFF    (/home/devops/.ansible/plugins/modules/diff.py)

        Diff compare a string, file or command output against a string file or command
        output. Check mode is only supported when diffing strings or files, commands
        will only be executed in actual run. More examples at
        https://github.com/cytopia/ansible-module-diff
.
.
<removed>

Success ! You can see module info and documentation.

Side Note

In some cases, you don’t want to share the custom module with everyone or wants to limit to some projects only.

• In that case you can keep the module inside a sub-directory –library– in the same project directory. You can specify a module path in your ansible.cfg file.

[defaults]
...
library = ./library
...

• Also you can restrict the module to use in some roles by keeping the module inside a sub-directory –library– within that role directory.